Passengers on a Palm Springs-bound flight from Vancouver were delayed on Thursday after their plane made contact with a catering vehicle on the tarmac.
WestJet said the incident happened when flight 1722 was on pushback from its gate at YVR airport, when the contact occurred.
The company said all passengers and crew were safely offloaded and put on a new plane several hours later.
It’s unclear how much damage the plane sustained, but Instagram user Chris Cali who was aboard the plane said the collision “broke” the aircraft’s wing.
“We were backing off the tarmac and we heard a little pop, and if you’ve driven any amount of time you know that pop is metal, so we knew we hit something and we didn’t think it was any big deal, we maybe just ran over a suitcase or something,” she said.
“Within, I don’t know, five, 10 minutes they came on and told us what had happened and said it was a ground crew truck who hit our plane, not our plane hitting the truck and that the plane was damaged, the wing was damaged, and we would have to get on another plane.”
Cali said WestJet offered passengers meal vouchers, but that passengers were only delayed about 3.5 hours.
A spokesperson for YVR said the incident did not impact airport flight operations.
Comments